


Trooper

by AXEe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Future, Gen, Military Science Fiction, Outer Space, Women in the Military
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:19:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27704728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AXEe/pseuds/AXEe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. Prologue

******

In 1969, Humanity took its first steps on another world. One hundred years later, in 2069, they took their second, setting foot on Mars, an action which paved the way for the colonization of the entire Solar System. But for the next several centuries, they were bound to the confines of the orbit of Sol. That is until the year 2330, when a brand new discovery was made, right on the edges of the system. 

Called a ‘collapsar’—a portmanteau of ‘collapsed’ and ‘star’—a collapsar was similar to a black hole—namely a large celestial object (most likely a star) which had collapsed in on itself into an incredibly small and dense object—typically no bigger in size than a basketball. Unlike a black hole however, a collapsar had a very negligible gravity well, which was why the first one discovered had gone unnoticed for so long

Because of this peculiarity, a collapsar was theorized to be an intense ‘tangle’ or ‘web’ of space-time rather than singularity. Incredibly, this ‘tangle’ or ‘web’ seemed to link each collapsar to one another regardless of the actual physical distance between them, forming a network. As if all of this wasn’t strange enough, it was found that if a particle of matter, such a ship, entered a collapsar it could be accelerated as fast as it wanted without gaining any extra mass, thus circumventing one of the prime laws of general relativity, namely the closer an object approached the speed of light, the slower time passed around it.

What this meant for the collective masses of Humanity was that, if a ship entered a collapsar, it could go as fast as it wanted from one collapsar to another without suffering from any of the time dilation that such an act would cause in normal space, unlocking the secret of practical faster-than-light travel. However, just as Humanity was patting itself on the back at how smart it was for making this discovery it was found that there were some significant drawbacks and downright hazards to collapsar travel.

Firstly was simple distance, each collapsar, despite being linked to one another, occupied a fixed point in space, meaning that order to reach a collapsar or vice versa reaching your destination upon exiting a collapsar, could require a journey of several days or even weeks or months at sublight speed. A journey from Earth to the collapsar at the outer edges of the Solar System—apply named ‘Gateway’—could take up to three weeks. As if that wasn’t frustrating enough, once a ship entered a collapsar the normal laws of physics didn’t just break down, they went out the window.

If two ships entered and exited a collapsar at the same time, the crew of one ship could have experienced a journey of only a few seconds while the crew of the other ship could have experienced the same journey as taking days or weeks or months, and could even been older than their counterparts on the other ship, this inconsistency was unpredictable and could be experienced by any ship at any time it entered or exited a collapsar, meaning that notions such as time, distance, and velocity were meaningless when applied to collapsar travel, and a frequent maxim among pilots whenever they were asked about travel time was: _‘we’ll get there when we get there’_.

As if this discrepancy in time wasn’t bad enough, it was found that matter could only exist within a collapsar at the most basic subatomic level, meaning that once a ship entered a collapsar it would begin to decay at the molecular level, fortunately however it was found that this molecular decay occurred very slowly, it could take years before any significant structural damage became apparent.

As a result, to prevent the crews from going mad from the isolation and cabin fever and to protect them from the lethal molecular decay, most long-distance ships had the crew undergo a period of suspended animation, typically on a rotating roster, allowing for every crewmember to be suspended but also ensuring that ‘someone’ was awake if anything went wrong during the trip.

Despite these drawbacks and hazards, Humanity had pushed forwards to explore this new frontier, which was motived just as much by a desire to explore as it was practicality, as Humanity now numbered into hundred millions and continued to grow in numbers.

The first long-range missions through the collapsar network had been by unmanned probes, which had charted dozens of other collapsars and, more significantly, dozens of other star systems, some of which had planets capable of supporting human life (although the definition of ‘capable of supporting human life’ was a bit nebulous). Nevertheless, this discovery had led to a mass scramble by Humanity to land on these planets and colonize them.

Termed the ‘Great Exodus’, the first planet to be settled on was a very Earthlike planet that had been aptly—if rather unimaginatively—named ‘New Earth’. Roughly one hundred light-years from Earth, New Earth became Humanity’s first extrasolar colony, and from New Earth, more expeditions were launched, traveling through another collapsar to settle on a planet that was named ‘Roanoke’ after the first European colony in North America.

With both New Earth and Roanoke becoming thriving settlements, more expeditions were launched in the coming decades, settling on dozens of new worlds, some of which were Earthlike, and other that only marginally fit the definition of ‘capable of supporting human life’. By 2485, Humankind had stretched out far and wide from their home.

That very year, a new expedition was launched from Earth, aimed for a newly-discovered star system which had been termed the ‘Demeter System’. Upon arriving after a six month journey, the colonization fleet found that, unlike Earth’s other extrasolar colonies which typically occupied only one Earthlike planet, the Demeter System was just _teeming_ possibility. The main planet—named ‘Demeter’—was a verdant, garden-like planet, but other terrestrial planets in the system were equally as capable of supporting life. Even some of the moons orbiting the system’s gas giants were habitable, spurring a second wave of colonization efforts.

As the planets were steadily settled it soon became apparent that a unified government was not only needed but strongly desired. In 2490, the ‘Colonial Coalition’ was formed, uniting most of the planets in the Demeter System under one banner and government. But before the new government could finish pouring the proverbial champagne it ran into resistance from some of the outer colonies.

Calling themselves the ‘Non-aligned Planets’ or N.A.P. (which was something of a misnomer as most the colonies in question were actually based on moons), the new group vehemently objected to the idea of a unified government and took up arms against the Coalition government based on Demeter, staging a series of hit-and-run attacks on the government. To make matters worse, it was revealed that Earth was supporting the N.A.P. which, understandably, led to some bad blood between Earth and the Coalition.

Despite the support from Earth, the N.A.P. collapsed after only one and half years, their tactics of using terror attacks against both civilians and military had, instead of garnering support for their cause, had only earned them the scorn of the Coalition’s populace and from Earth itself, which quickly withdrew its support, leading to the rapid, large-scale collapse of the movement as a whole.

With N.A.P. effectively dead, the Coalition’s exploratory and defense arm, the Coalition Expeditionary Defense Force—CEDF for short—had pushed out past the confines of the System, finding dozens of other new worlds. In 2492, the CEDF ship _Agrippa_ encountered another ship that was not of Human origin or design.

Humanity had made first contact with a sentient alien race.

Called the ‘C’h’z’a’, the aliens were an insectoid species (another misnomer as Earth-based terminology could hardly be applied to an alien species) that greatly resembled anthropomorphic honeybees in appearance; an eusocial species like the insects they outwardly resembled, the C’h’z’a lived in vast, largely underground, hives on a low-gravity, Mars-sized planet, with each individual hive analogous to the nation-states that had once existed on Earth. The entire species was organized into three main castes, each with dozens of variants that could vary widely in appearance depending on their particular role in society.

The main caste—and by far the largest—were the workers; sterile females who functioned as laborers, soldiers, pilots, explorers, and whatever else the hive needed, a worker’s individual function could be changed through advanced genetic engineering or, just as easily, a new brand new variety of specialized worker could be bred by the queen at the need of the hive.

While the female workers were the most active, much more rarely seen were the drones; males who’s function was to bred with the queen and also who functioned as caregivers for the young. Drones typically never left the hive they had been born in and were actually terrified of doing so. Even more rarely seen than the drones were the queens who produced new young and whom never left the safety of the hive. Unlike what had long been suggested by Human science fiction, C’h’z’a queens did not ‘rule’ a hive, in fact the species had no individual leaders; all decisions made were done through a massive consensus vote.

Despite that, individual members of the species weren’t mindless automatons; an individual worker could have many of the same hopes and dreams as a Human, and even took pride in her position in society even though she would not hesitate to sacrifice her life to ensure the safety of the rest of her people.

The strange mix between individual aspirations and the greater good of the species had initially confused Humans until it was found that such aspiration were tempered by how they benefited the species as a whole. Art for example, while not strictly beneficial, was not strictly detrimental either and was permitted, whereas murder and other crimes were not.

Despite the differences between the Coalition’s more individualistic culture and the C'h'z'a's communal society the two species had forged a fast alliance, finding that they had just as many traits in common; curiosity, innovation, and appreciation of art and beauty just to name a few, and C’h’z’a pilots were soon serving on Coalition ships, their inbred talents helping the Coalition to find and map new collapsars.

It was during one of these expeditions in the year 2550 that another ship of alien origin was encountered. But unlike the C’h’z’a, these beings were far from friendly.

Calling themselves the ‘Kad’Hara’, the towering reptilian race had swiftly launched an attack against both the Coalition and the C’h’z’a. Interrogation of captured Kad’Hara prisoners revealed that they were a highly territorial and expansionistic species who zealously followed a religion that preached that the whole of the universe had been made just for them and them alone; to them the Demeter System was naturally their property, regardless of the fact that they hadn’t even been aware of its existence until the first attack.

Realizing that negotiation was currently impossible as the Kad’Hara carried out attacks on any Human or C’h’z’a settlement or ship they encountered, both the Coalition and the C’h’z’a were forced to declare war…


	2. Old Woman's War

******

**2555  
Coalition Expeditionary Defense Force ship C.C.S. _Torchwood_**

The C.C.S. _Torchwood_ exited the collapsar with a slight shudder. The transition back to normal space triggered an automated response from the ship’s computer.

**Exit from collapsar successful…**

**Retracting gravity sails…**

**Initiating secondary procedures…**

**Establishing link with Coalition time beacon network…**

**Temporal discrepancy: three weeks, two days, and four hours**

**Synchronizing ship’s clock with time beacon…**

**Synchronization complete….**

**Waking crew from cryo-sleep…**

One by one, the large, boxy tube-like structures located in the ship’s aptly-named ‘hibernation bay’ situated deep in the heavily-shielded and armored midsection began to light up, the icy frost coating their transparent lids slowly melting away as those crewmembers who hadn’t been woken during the last jump began to slowly wake up

Currently, Sergeant D.C. Rayner was already awake and nursing a heathy cup of freeze dried coffee (whether coffee was actually ‘healthy’ was a matter of vigorous debate). Being part of the crew who had been woken prior to exiting the collapsar it was now Rayner’s oh-so-glamorous job to ensure that everyone else in her team woke up safely, after which she and her team were to report to Colonel Jones to receive their orders concerning the ongoing war effort.

The war had been given many names. Most called it the ‘Kad’Hara War’, or more simply the ‘Interstellar War’, and both of those terms were the accepted, official terminology used by the governments of the Colonial Coalition and United Earth, but there were dozens of others, some more descriptive than others. The soldiers like Rayner who were fighting and dying on the frontlines of the war often simply called it the ‘Lizard War’ owning to the reptilian nature of the enemy.

D.C. Rayner was a bit of anomaly in the CEDF. Most new recruits into Humanity’s varied armed forces would eventually go on to become officers and take up a desk job. Not Rayner, she had nothing against officers (as a general rule that is) it was just too much paperwork in her opinion, no, she was happy being a career noncom, and while that wasn’t in itself out of the ordinary, her age was.

On her sixtieth birthday, D.C. Rayner had done exactly two things: first, she’d baked a pie for her son and his husband and secondly, she’d walked into a CEDF recruitment office and enlisted.

CEDF standards did not discriminate based upon race, gender, religion, sexuality or gender identity, or age. As long as the potential recruit was over twenty-one years old and passed the physical and psychological tests they couldn’t, legally, be turned away if they were that set on enlisting. Still, Rayner had gotten her fair share of odd looks when she’s shown up at Camp Hultgreen for basic training.

Despite the odd looks, she had persisted, soon graduating with the rank of sergeant in the CEDF’s Mobile Infantry, a branch of the CEDF analogous to the marines or naval infantry of the past, the MI worked in conjunction with the Fleet as so-called ‘force projection’, using the mobility provided by the Fleet to stage landings on planets and other celestial bodies, as well as undertaking boarding operations of other ships and space-based instillations, as well as acting as security for CEDF facilities.

Furthering her persistence, Rayner had succeeded in joining the elite—and demanding—Special Forces’ unit known as the ‘captroopers corps’. Alternatively spelled as ‘cap-troopers’, they were the best of the best. Usually working in small, tightknit teams of four to five at the lowest to twelve to fourteen at the highest they were the ones who were tasked with going behind enemy lines and causing as much havoc as possible (or, as Rayner’s drill sergeant had described it, _‘becoming the biggest pains in the enemy’s ass’_ ), they were the ones to who sabotaged the enemy’s new base, made off with the plans for the new weapon, and even outright assassinated high-profile targets. Alternatively, they could also be deployed to retrieve important persons or equipment from enemy strongholds, and were expected to both excel at their intended mission as well as being capable of quickly improvising on the fly if something unexpected happened.

But the most impressive aspect of their job description was right there in their name. A portmanteau of ‘capsule’ and ‘troopers’, captroopers were typically delivered to a planet’s surface in a method that was officially—and euphemistically—described by the CEDF as ‘trans-orbital injection’, but was often simply called an ‘orbital drop’. In essence, a captrooper was strapped into a very small, one-person capsule along with all their equipment and then literally ‘dropped’ from orbit towards the planet’s surface en mass at nearly terminal velocity.

If all went well, the trooper would land on the planet’s surface in a hard, but ultimately, safe landing. If everything went pear-shaped, then the capsule would impact with the ground at terminal velocity with the unfortunate trooper trapped inside, and at those speeds death wasn’t a possibility, it was a certainty.

It was no surprise than that membership to the Captroopers Corps was purely voluntary, and training was extremely demanding on the applicant’s physical and mental capabilities, featuring some of the most physically and mentally grueling training ever devised by Humanity. Most of the twentysomethings in textbook shape who applied washed out in the first week by the dozens, a sixty year old woman who had one child should have washed out in the first day—hell in the first _hour_ even—but Rayner hadn’t. Somehow—either through sheer determination, luck, or possibly even divine favor—she had passed, graduating with the ten out of the two hundred who had applied that year.

Three of those ten would form the basis of her team. Officially designated ‘Halo-Bravo’, the team had rapidly earned the nickname ‘Hellbringers’ owing to their high success rate in the early days of the war.

Pushing off the wall, Rayner floated across the zero-g environment of the bay towards one of the cryo-tubes, swinging herself around with practiced ease to float at the head of the tube and avoid getting hit in the head by the rising lid. The tube’s occupant opened one eye as he peered up at her.

“Sarge” he acknowledged.

“Mason” she nodded back.

“We there yet?” Mason asked.

“We are” Rayner confirmed.

“Groovy” unstrapping the restraints securing himself to the interior of the tube, Mason floated free of its confines, doing a lazy somersault in the air as he did so. One of the first people Rayner had met in basic training, William ‘Will’ Mason had quickly become her guide to the ins and outs of life in the CEDF, his laconic, laid-back, and easy-going attitude becoming a much-needed respite after dragging her ass through the proverbial (and not so proverbial) mud.

Mason was known among his friends and acquaintances for not being particularly surprised by anything and for his affection for green apple-flavored bubblegum. Had he been born a few centuries earlier he might have easily slotted into the popular depiction of a stoner (never mind that marijuana had been extinct for nearly ninety years now).

Leaving him to it, Rayner moved onto the next tube, smirking at the sight of the grimace on the occupant’s face. Medical corpsman Cole ‘Doc’ Hauser was young, she had just turned twenty-two a few weeks ago in fact, and was the polar opposite of Rayner, while Rayner was six feet tall with dark brown hair and fair skin and blue eyes, Cole was petite—a little under five feet tall—with a dark olive complexion and brown eyes and short, close-cropped black hair. She reminded Rayner of herself at that same age and it was no real surprise that she found herself taking the young woman under her wing

Wrinkling her nose, she groaned as she blinked and finally looked up blearily at Rayner.

“All due respect, Sergeant, but please tell me that we’ve arrived?” she pleaded.

“We’ve arrived,” Rayner chuckled, reaching out to unstrap Cole’s body from the interior of tube “come on, Doc, up you get” she said as she released the last strap, allowing Cole to float free, earning a loud groan from the corpsman

“Oh, god, I hate zero-g,” she groaned “I think I’m going to be sick”

“Come on, Doc,” Mason laughed “you always say that and you never are”

“There’s always a first time” Cole retorted, as if to prove this point she hiccupped.

Smirking, Rayner kicked off the side of Cole’s cryo-tube and pushed herself towards the fourth and final tube that contained the last member of her team. This one was different in design from the others, shorter and wider than the others, the display panels that monitored the occupant’s vitals giving off a different set of readings when compared to the others.

Catching herself on a nearby handhold, Rayner swung herself into a position perpendicular to the tube as it began to wake its occupant. With a muted _hiss_ and a brief cloud of mist, the tub opened, the lid splitting open in a series of panels like flower petals almost. Inside sat a decidedly alien occupant.

Groggily shaking its head, the occupant turned to Rayner, a pair of antennae twitching and pointing in her direction as a roughly-valentine-shaped head lifted and turned to face her, large, oval, pure black eyes staring at her, a set of mandible clicking and clacking.

“ _We are awake, Sergeant Rayner,_ ” an electronically synthesized female voice stated from the metallic collar just under the alien’s head “ _how many we serve?_ ”

“Just a wakeup call, Mary,” Rayner dismissed “no need stand on ceremony”

The C’h’z’a worker’s mandibles clicked again, antennae curling down slightly, the C’h’z’a equivalent of a smile. With a visible wince, the alien pulled herself free of the tube, her four legs kicking at empty air as she stretched, easily rotating with a level of skill and ease that Rayner would never be able to replicate before Mary angled herself down, her four legs clinging to the sides of her cryo-tube as she stood up.

Outwardly, the C’h’z’a resembled anthropomorphic wingless honeybees, complete with a set of yellow and black strips on their lower bodies. Possessing six limbs, the average C’h’z’a stood on four legs, resembling a centaur, while the uppermost two limbs were used as arms, each arm having two three-fingered hands and a thumb (or, rather, a digit that preformed the same function as a Human thumb) and were covered with a glossy yellow and black exoskeleton.

Although frequently described as ‘insectoid’, the C’h’z’a weren’t insects or arthropods (at least not as understood by Human standards), unlike earthly insects, C’h’z’a were warm blooded and had well-developed and functional and robust cardiovascular systems, and the chemical composition of their exoskeletons was closer to living bone than chitin and grew with the individual, largely eliminating the need to molt (though if the exoskeleton was damaged severely enough a C’h’z’a would undergo a form of molting).

Having evolved on a low-gravity world, they weren’t particularly tall; Mary barely came up to Rayner’s waist, but they were tough, their exoskeleton was even bullet resistant to small-caliber arms, but their low-gravity origins meant that they were much weaker than a Human, the proverbial ninety pound weakling could probably best a C’h’z’a warrior in hand to hand combat.

Mary was a unique case, she had been bred by a small colony that had established itself on Demeter, the colony’s purpose was to further strengthen relations between Humans and the C’h’z’a. As a result of being hatched on a high-gravity (to them) world as well as some genetic engineering, Mary and the rest of her generation had developed stronger muscles than their relatives back home, but their increased strength was still below the average of a Human.

To further their integration in Human society, the workers of the colony had even sent their newly-hatched workers to Humans schools, which was how Rayner and Mary had met, the C’h’z’a having been friends with Rayner’s son in middle school, in what was practically a case study for Human-C’h’z’a relations, Mary had hit it off with both Rayner’s son and with Rayner herself.

“ _Attention all hands,_ ” suddenly came the voice of the ship’s commanding officer, Colonel Joanna Archer, over the intercom “ _standby for full thrust. Secure all loose materials_ ”

“All right, people, you know the drill,” Rayner called out “grab hold of something”

Hurriedly ‘swimming’ across the bay, Cole and Mason both grabbed hold of the handholds set into the wall, while Mary gripped the edges of her cryo-tube with all four feet, and Rayner meanwhile merely tucked her legs in towards her chest.

Despite all of the advances that Humanity had made over the past two centuries some things were still within the realms of science fiction, artificial gravity was one of them, neither Earth, the Colonial Coalition, or the C’h’z’a or the Kad’Hara had developed such technology, and most assumed that it was impossible. To combat this, most of the ships used by all three races were built in one of two ways. Some were built with a specialized rotating midsection, essentially a large cylindrical ‘drum’ located more-or-less in the center of the ship that rotated, producing centrifugal force that simulated gravity, but this meant that the crew was limited to staying within the rotating section in if they wanted to walk around and most ships couldn’t have every vital system located in one place.

For the Coalition—in the particular the CEDF—the solution was the constant acceleration model; ships were built vertically like a tower with the engines at the ‘bottom’ of the tower and the various decks stacked one atop the other. When activated, the thrust generated by the ship’s engines caused the crew and cargo to freefall back towards the direction of the thrust, and since direction in zero gravity was relative, ships could be built in any configuration without worrying about aerodynamics. Because this had become the design standard among the Coalition some shipbuilders had begun to build ships that outwardly resembled the fabled rocketships of old popular culture of the pre-FTL days.

Most of these ships were private vessels owned by private corporations or extremely wealthy individuals, and the CEDF preferred ships that more utilitarian in design.

With a shudder, the main engines of the _Torchwood_ slowly fired, the resulting acceleration acting as a form of artificial gravity and suddenly there was an ‘up’ and a ‘down’, the surface that the cryo-tubes were secured to becoming the ‘floor’ of the bay.

Grunting, Cole and Mason both bodily jerked as they ‘dropped’, while Mary’s four feet easily kept her secure as the freefall effect took hold, while Rayner smoothly dropped to the floor in a crouch, quickly standing up.

“Everybody good?” she asked, nodding in satisfaction as everyone answered in the affirmative “all right, kids,” she called out, already heading for the hatch “let’s go see what the Colonel wants us to do today”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cast of characters
> 
> Rayner: Brenda Strong
> 
> Cole Hauser: Briana Venskus
> 
> Mason: Don't know
> 
> The terms 'mobile infantry' and 'captrooper' are borrowed from "Starship Troopers" by Robert A Heinlein, controversial politics aside, the book pretty much kicked off the whole genre of military science fiction, but while in here I envision the mobile infantry as being like today's marine corps, Heinlein depicts them more like a tank unit, with the individual soldiers being outfitted with so-called 'powered suits' that pretty much turn them each into a walking tank and 'captrooper' being just a nickname for them, while here I envision the captroopers being a totally separate branch.
> 
> The book also has an interesting link to my casting choice as actress Brenda Strong appeared in the 1997 film adaptation by director Paul Verhooven and also appeared in its direct-to-video sequel as a different character who was supposed to be the twin sister of her character from the first film but the dialogue explaining that was left out of the final product, resulting in some confusion from viewers since her character in the first film was killed off

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought :=)


End file.
